


the beautiful and damned

by lyricalprose (fairylights)



Series: Noir AU [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairylights/pseuds/lyricalprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ninth Circle is a nice place. The proprietress - not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beautiful and damned

  
The Ninth Circle is a nice place. Elegant, even. There are red silk drapes hanging from the ceiling, black velvet spread across the tabletops, expensive scotch on hand behind the polished maple bar. The grand piano is a sleek black Steinway, placed artistically beneath a diamond chandelier that glitters fiercely even though the light in the room is dim at best.  
  
Ruby knows she completes the picture perfectly. She's the centerpiece of the place tonight, after all – a long, curvy blonde body in a shimmering black dress, leaning up against the piano. There's a rope of the red stones that match her name wound around her neck, and she's playing the crowd like a finely tuned instrument as she sings, drawing the notes out and letting them linger in the smoky air.  
  
When it comes to putting people at ease, music is just as effective as alcohol – and both of those things flow freely here, if you can get in. There's a fairly select crowd that frequents this particular speakeasy, and though there's more people here tonight than usual, it's still a smaller group. Thirty, forty people at the most.  
  
But every eye in the room is on Ruby right now, and she loves it – though there's only one pair of eyes that she can _feel,_ and those are Lilith's.  
  
Lilith is sitting at her table in the corner, eyes fixed on Ruby as she moves in front of the piano, works the crowd with the chorus of her song. Her eyes the kind of blue that are so clear it's unnerving, and she's watching the club, watching Ruby, with the air of a queen observing her kingdom. It looks like a tiny kingdom from here, just a nice club with a bar, a beautiful singer and a loyal clientele – but that's just what you can _see._  
  
Lilith is not your average woman. Lilith’s favorite things in the world are diamonds and blood and dirty martinis – and she prefers to have them all at once, if she can. Ruby can't count the number of times she's seen Lilith's left arm dripping with jewels while her right is covered in blood, dragging a knife through some poor bastard's skin and smiling all the while, like it's the best game she's ever played.  
  
Lilith has _ambitions,_ has _plans_ for this town and for her place in it. She runs booze and guns and drugs, counterfeits money, bribes police and politicians, and paints the walls red with the blood of her enemies without ever breaking one perfectly manicured nail.  
  
But she covers her tracks. The cops don't suspect her, not the pretty heiress who started her pet business with Daddy's money and keeps it running with her "high-society" connections. It might be illegal to sell booze, but Lilith has enough green to keep the police off her back. As far as they know, that's all she's doing, and so they haven't bothered her yet.  
  
Nobody ever suspects her because nobody who'd squeal ever lives to tell the tale.  
  
So Lilith is safe, for now. Safe and secret and happy, blood and booze and diamonds all the time. Ruby's pretty sure that she has a grand entrance into the greater seedy underbelly of the world planned sometime soon, and that it'll be _spectacular,_ but right now the world's not ready for that. Not yet.  
  
The song is finished now, piano winding down as Ruby ties off her last note, ending quietly rather than dramatically, in tune with the mood of the music. It's the last bit of her set for the night, and so with a check towards Lilith's table, she heads towards the bar.  
  
Meg, the bartender, is just as much of a decoration as Ruby is. She's just a different kind. Meg is petite without being slight, with bobbed blonde hair and hard brown eyes in a knee-length red dress with fringe all over. She looks all wrong for a bartender – she's a woman, for one thing. She dresses more like a flighty young thing on the arm of a businessman buying her drinks than like the professional making them. But that's kind of the point. Lilith's gotten where she is by being...unconventional.  
  
Ruby doesn't really like Meg, not all that much. She's hard and blunt and there's no smoothness to her, no artfulness. Ruby is all about artifice, and Meg isn't quite as good at that. She tries. But she's not Ruby.  
  
Not that she has much of a choice about whether to like Meg or not, since they're stuck together. Meg is Lilith's just like Ruby is Lilith's and once you're Lilith's, there's no going back, no second chances, no changing your mind.  
  
Not that she or Meg would _want_ to, really. You don't fall in with Lilith because you're well-adjusted.  
  
She pulls up a barstool and settles in to watch the room, bums a cigarette off the very generous (and very obviously leering) businessman next to her, and takes a long drag.  
  
"That can't be doing those pipes any favors." Meg says this at the same time that she's grabbing Ruby's cigarette, taking a drag of her own before handing it back with a smirk.  
  
"My voice will survive." she answers dryly. "And get your own damn cigarette."  
  
Meg laughs. There's no real humor in it, no amusement. "Well, aren't we touchy tonight." Her teeth are white and gleaming in the low light and she looks a bit like something hiding in the dark, feral and hungry but dressed up in red lipstick and pearls.  
  
"Oh, look at who's here." Meg finishes pouring a customer's whiskey and nods toward the front door.  
  
Sam Winchester is back again tonight, bloodshot eyes clashing with his immaculate gray suit and looking every bit the wreck he did when he wandered in four months ago. He'd been an absolute mess then, aiming to drink the bar dry in an effort to forget that his brother was gone, nothing left of him but a shredded jacket and a bloody detective's badge in a Brooklyn back alley.  
  
Sam is a detective, one of Bobby Singer's best men at the precinct, and back when his brother Dean was around, they'd been the best team in town. Even Lilith had been impressed by the cases they'd cracked together, by the number of mobsters they'd taken down.  
  
But they got too close to Lilith, too close to pulling back the red silk drapes and seeing that there was blood pooling in the back rooms of this place. And there's only one way that can end.  
  
Dean's been out of the picture for months now, and Lilith has Sam Winchester right where she wants him – in Ruby's very capable hands, strung along and oblivious with grief.  
  
"Little Sammy Winchester, back again. He just can't quit you, can he, sweetheart?" Meg clicks her tongue and shakes her head, her smile predatory as she looks from Sam to Ruby. "Well? You know your job, go on over and _look after_ the poor boy."  
  
Ruby looks to Lilith, who's still sitting at her table in the corner of the lounge, running her fingers up and down the neck of her glass. Lilith nods, and her smile is wicked, gleeful and malicious as she brings the drink to her lips and gives the silent command.  
  
She pushes away from the bar and oozes across the room towards Sam, every swing of her hips and sultry glance through her eyelashes carefully calculated and measured, tested and true. Sam notices her before she makes it over to him, and by the time she gets there, threads her arm into the crook of his elbow and runs her fingers up to his shoulder, he's already relaxing, leaning into the touch that promises him forgiveness, absolution, _forgetting._  
  
It's so easy by now that she almost feels guilty. Almost. The tiny tinge of guilt is far outweighed by _power,_ by how good it feels that she can play Sam so well, so capably, by the surge of hot blinding pride that runs up her spine and crackles in her smile when she sees approval in Lilith's face across the room. Any part of her that feels bad about leading Sam on is crushed by the fact that she can _do_ this, despite what's going on right under his nose.  
  
After all, Sam doesn't know that they've had his brother tied to a chair in the locked back room for the last four months, and what Sam doesn't know won't hurt him.


End file.
